Not since the Arms Crisis has Leinster House been so shellshocked. Hardbitten colleagues who have pulled the odd stroke in their time are still aghast at the notion of putting your vote up for auction. Streetwise deputies who have got a few bob at election time from their locally friendly builder "in the normal way" have gone scurrying for their records.
If the Dunlop detonator under the political system wasn't enough, the relative quiet of the holiday weekend was shattered by what Bertie Ahern calls "these rumours."
Fianna Fail circles the wagons and clasps the other parties in a smothering embrace. All public references by Fianna Fail spokespersons are to the "political parties" and to "the politicians" and how we are all in this together.
Well, we are not all in this together. The pretence that Dublin County Council is a foreign country where inexplicable things happened will not satisfy a rejuvenated Mr Justice Flood. Fianna Fail led the rezoning antics with the help of some local Fine Gael stalwarts. Journalists can validate Eithne Fitzgerald's recall of "the military precision" with which it was executed. "Why did no one shout stop?" is the most dishonest chant of the rezoning chorus. Labour, Workers' Party, Green and some PD councillors fought interminable battles, some of them reflected in the media at the time.
Spare a thought for the hapless Michael O'Kennedy, self-appointed elder statesman and sometimes barrister-at-law. With an exquisite sense of timing, he wanted to know recently when the Government was going to act to shut down the Flood tribunal. Several colleagues had been saying as much in private to Drapier but only Michael would bumble into posing the question on the Order of Business. Perhaps he had taken inspiration from the colourful remarks of his former party associate and now Taxing Master, James Flynn.
After the Dunlop thunderstorm both men are left to look silly.
That, however, is the least of the problems which the political system is now left to confront. To have suspected that something was rotten in Dublin planning is one thing, to have apparent evidence of corruption on this scale is quite another. O'Kennedy and Flynn are guilty only of poor judgment. However, others who sought to undermine the Flood tribunal even before it got off the ground seem to have had very good reason to feel threatened. Even now it is not remotely possible to know where it will all lead.
We have lost our capacity for shock when the Taoiseach of the day is obliged on the hallowed Arbour Hill plot to field questions about "rumours" that would seek to implicate him in "a cheque for favours" allegation. Bertie was as convincing as Bertie can ever be but it was the strained faces of those who ringed him that spoiled Drapier's few days in distant Kerry. Men like Michael Woods, Jim Tunney and inveterate caller to radio programmes Michael J. Stokes have plenty of experience doughnutting Fianna Fail taoisigh. Notwithstanding Bertie's bravura performance, they looked like men who had just heard their homes were burgled. The redoubtable Dick Roche was on hand as always but even he seemed a changed man from the oleaginous performer on Prime Time a few days earlier who made the most of John Bruton's temporary discomfort. After the Dunlop deluge, he was still on overdrive on Saturday View. He thought Fianna Fail's code of ethics was a headline for the other parties.
It is this kind of brass-necked effrontery that is a turn-off for the electorate. The internal Fianna Fail code, watered down as it is, was forced on the party by recent events. This argument is like Bertie claiming as a virtue that he set up the tribunal. He did but only as a result of media pressure and after it was forced on him in public by the opposition parties and, in private, by the PDs. Without the agreement of Fianna Fail, there would have been no tribunal. But in that event there would not have been a Government that included Fianna Fail.
Drapier is satisfied to accept Bertie's word. If the contrary is proven, then truly an appalling vista opens before us. Pat Rabbitte was right to warn that politics would be the loser in any general election precipitated in the present climate. Whatever the polls say, all practising politicians know that never before has there been such revulsion out there. Those implicated in the "councillors for cash" controversy seem to be predominantly from Fianna Fail and some from Fine Gael. The Labour Party and the Greens seem to have kept their bibs relatively clean. Joan Burton described graphically how Labour's consistent opposition to the rezoning majority on Dublin County Council could sometimes make life unpleasant. And Trevor Sargent has recalled how a Fianna Fail councillor, now a senator, caught him in a headlock when he waved a "hello money" cheque in the council chamber. And yet a consistent stance against dodgy rezonings has, at least up to now, been no guarantee of electoral success. This may say more about the Irish people than it does in the end about our political parties.
Seldom has Drapier been conscious of such a seismic development in Irish politics. The Kilkenny speech of Dermot Ahern advocating a ban on business funding of political parties is, in Fianna Fail terms, an earthquake-sized U-turn. The parliamentary party only a few weeks ago threw out a motion from Sean Fleming to the same effect. The attempt to equate tradeunion funding with corporate funding is wrong in a number of respects. However, since the Labour Party has led the demand to ban business funding, it ought to be prepared to forgo tradeunion finance in the interests of cleaning up politics.
Faithful Government Press Secretary Joe Lennon is keeping an eye on Drapier. Maybe he would now publish the terms of Taxing Master Flynn's reported apology. Nobody asked Bertie for an apology. Not yet anyway.